Quoting Chesterton

February 21, 2011

Quoting Chesterton

I did not intend to once again wander away from this humble corner of the interwebs. Would that I had an intriguing and marvellous reason for not writing. I don't. The deep-hued, mid-winter blues are not intriguing. One does not marvel at laziness.

And so. Here I am. As faint hints of Spring reveal themselves in longer days. And shorter nights.

And I return to the pushed pixels of blog thoughts by quoting Gilbert Keith Chesterton.

People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. . . . It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one’s own. It is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob. To have fallen into any of those open traps of error and exaggeration which fashion after fashion and sect after sect set along the historic path of Christendom—that would indeed have been simple. It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect.

From Orthodoxy, Chapter 6, The Paradoxes of Christianity as quoted by Kevin Belmonte's Quotable Chesteron

I'm reading, and enjoying Belmonte's Defiant Joy: The Remarkable Life & Impact of G.K. Chesterton. The wonderful book blog of Byron Borger (of Hearts and Minds Books) makes me aware of a lot of very good books. I wish there was a way to purchase Kindle books from Byron's store. (And since much of Chesterton's writing is available for free or quite cheaply, I've loaded up said Kindle with GKC.)

And I will be back on Wednesday to celebrate the 6th blogiversary of what were once "achievable ends."

Posted by Kinnon on February 21, 2011 at 03:48 PM | Permalink

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And so. Here I am. As faint hints of Spring reveal themselves in longer days. And shorter nights.

And I return to the pushed pixels of blog thoughts by quoting Gilbert Keith Chesterton.

People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. . . . It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one’s own. It is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob. To have fallen into any of those open traps of error and exaggeration which fashion after fashion and sect after sect set along the historic path of Christendom—that would indeed have been simple. It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect.

From Orthodoxy, Chapter 6, The Paradoxes of Christianity as quoted by Kevin Belmonte's Quotable Chesteron

And I will be back on Wednesday to celebrate the 6th blogiversary of what were once "achievable ends."

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February 21, 2011